NYT: Germany's Unemployment Rate is 7.0 Percent or 6.2 Percent

In the NYT, Germany's unemployment rate seems to vary depending on which article you read. We can look at the chart accompanying a piece on Geithner lecturing the European Union on how to deal with debt and see that the German unemployment rate is 6.2 percent. Or we can read in a piece discussing Berlin's economic and social prospects that the city's 13.3 percent unemployment rate is far above the national average of 7.0 percent.

The 6.2 percent number in the chart is right. This is the OECD's harmonized unemployment rate. It uses essentially the same methodology as the United States government, which makes it a meaningful figure for NYT readers.

The 7.0 percent rate is the official German government rate. The German government methodology counts many part-time workers as being unemployed. This number does not provide an apples-to-apples basis for comparisons with the U.S. unemployment rate. Therefore it should not appear in a news story in the U.S. media.